AuthorTopic: My problem with modern games. (Read 64346 times)

Anyone who actually talks to me about games should know by now that hate modern games most of the time. Every time there's a new game I get sort of hopeful they will do better, but no. That's not how it goes. Developers are going down a nasty road and it seems nobody except a few independent, some who are barely capable, developers are not following it. But I could go on and on about this without even pointing out what the issues normally are. Lets get started then.

1. Loading Screens.I probably hate this because I have consoles and I'm old. I'm sorry, but when I started playing games on computers, you had to either program them, or use a k7 to load them up. Remember those days? Well, I was a kid back then. After that, came the 286s and even for a while we had games that would fit in floppy drives, playing on 8mhz computer that... -wouldn't have loading screens- ... You typed in "xcom" or "dagger" in the proper directory (yes, we called them directories back then, kids, not folder) and tada... The game was up. Maybe we'd have some EA or Interplay screen but that was it. No loading screens in between either.

What kills me about games today is that; Any game you play, there will be a loading screen at one point or another. For an example, the first time I started truly hating loading screens was with Morrowind. I'm a daggerfall fan and morrowind... well... There were loading screens for entering buildings and walking around. Of course, with today's computers you wont notice it as much, but at the time, it was awful. It just killed it for me and made me not want to play it anymore. I only came to enjoy it years later when computers got much faster.

I think there's a notable exception for that, when it comes to modern games, and it is Hitman. For any hitman games, even tho they have a loading screen, it zips by so fast you will barely notice it.

The most remarkable examples of loading screen madness would be MMORPGs most of the time. I'm currently playing STO and Champions Online and cryptic did a horrible job with their engine. It's all instanced one way or another and you see loading screens for everything. If you die, you will also see a loading screen, despise the area you are in is already loaded up. Not only that, most of the information needed to get the loading screen moving is online. So if you're having a bad internet day, changing instances and going to an open zone will give you time to pee and maybe go get some coffee. For a heavily instance game, that's madness. It's just poorly thought and designed.

Spoony mentioned bayoneta for the PS3 and he said there were loading screens to -pause- the game. Also 5 seconds loading screens for when you get an item. Takes 5 seconds to load up the picture of the item you got. That's fucked up.

2. Don't insult our intelligence.I believe us b12ers have a reasonable level of intelligence, even the young ones, and I'm sure you all have noticed how gameplay is being dumbed down. Not only that, but the games are also being made easier too. Lets take the elder scrolls for example, from arena to oblivion, they removed several dozen skills, limited your choices, took away even armor classes, and limited your skill levels. I'm not sure about you guys, but I like complexity, I like challenge when I play something. I like losing when I do something wrong, I like doing intelligent strategies and combos to win, instead of just pressing the same button over and over.

It just makes me feel they are making games for retards. Also, not to say that people who like consoles are dumb in any way, but there used to be a clear difference in complexity and style from consoles to PCs, but today, most games are being made for consoles and then ported to pcs. Either that or being multi-platform. That's resulting in two things. Games that completely ignore the fact you have a keyboard and generally want to do more than press 1, 2, and 3. And games that are poorly ported and are sluggish to say the best. Dragon Age is a clear example of that. They made it seem like it was a next generation rpg, but it was a very very dumbed down baldur's gate. From beginning to end, the general experience of playing that game was the same. There wasn't anything compelling about it. It was just... made for retards. Not that intelligent people can't enjoy it, but it's not very challenging or something that would make you use your head much.

3. That horse is dead already. (Or also, that cow is out of milk.)I hate it when people start milking older games. Not only they milk it, but they manage to make it not as good as the original. I mean, if you are basing your work on something else, make it -better-, I think that's the whole point. Oblivion, for example, it was sort of enjoyable, but again, it felt like something made for the console and didn't have nearly the complexity of its predecessors. Fallout 3 also comes to mind (and it seems I'm beating the same studio). But there are other examples of studios that basically copy the gameplay of an older game, dumb it down, milk it, flog it, and then deliver something out as it being the next big thing (tm) and when in fact, it's not.

I think this complaint should belong to my point number 2, but it deserves some attention of its own. I don't really mind people not being original, I mean, some games deserve to be looked at and improved. But we have lots of (spiritual) sequels that don't really offer anything new, in fact, they offer less than the game they are based on. I think one of the great exceptions might be GTA, despise the fact I didn't like GTA 4, anyone who has played the original... and even GTA 2... will know the sort of impressive and major improvement it got when it became GTA 3. Sadly, we can't say the same for mostly every other sequel there is.

4. Sorry, but why can't I go there?Linear gameplay bores me. I'm not saying linear as in, following a story, but linear as in design. It seems some developers really want to undermine your creativity and ability to come up with solutions by giving you a single specific route you can follow. Let's take Portal for example, portal is linear story-wise, you go through the same levels every time you play it, and you get to the same ending always. But what was enjoyable about it was that most levels had huge potential of freedom. You could improvise and do crazy stuff to come to a solution. If you guys check on youtube, you can find some awesome videos of how some people can beat a portal level. Some of them even amazed me. I was like... wow... I never thought of that...

Anyway. Having a linear design not only makes me feel like I'm being forded down a path, but also cuts out re-playability. When you have a game that makes you think "I could have done that different. Lets try it." Then you have a fairly lasting game in your hands.

Also, procedural/dynamic content. It's really sad to see that not enough games make use of that. Lets take Mirror's edge for example. I loved that game... But it lasted 5 hours or so... If they had thought of procedural map generation, wow... I'd be playing it to this day and I'm sure, they'd have people interested in it even today, while I think nobody even mentions it anymore. Not even to complain. Except for me.

5. Military training.Take most games today. Specially RPGs. They have you kill and kill and kill and kill and then beat the dead people a bit more. Worst yet, they make it seem like it's supposed to be for a greater good. For example, I mentioned I was playing STO and at any given instance, I have to kill, maybe 25, 30, ships. You say, okay, that's not a lot, but consider there, there would be at least 100 crew members inside any of those ships... That's 3000 people killed in a single instance... How many times do we see someone commit mass murder in any startrek show? Zero. In fact, they are most often concerned about it and want to avoid it.

Okay, I'm sure that for some games, like GTA, Borderlands, and prototype, mass murdering is fun. You're meant to be a badass psychopath. But it really doesn't make sense for some games and honestly, it shouldn't be a requirement. It shouldn't seem like you can completely ignore the other side's point of view and simply kill them all to fix it.

6. Oooh pretty.Too much emphasis on graphics and too little on gameplay. All the current improvements are also towards graphics. People were talking to me about DX11 the other day and I was like... Okay, but how does that enhance my gameplay? ... It doesn't. I mean, it will look prettier, but if people keep making pretty retarded games, they will still be retarded. It seems more like beer ads than games to me.

I don't oppose games looking better but they should also play better and hopefully not take 10gb to install. That's insane. Specially for games that essentially -suck-.

As games get more complex, loading screens have to be there. As the market widens, games are 'dumbed down' to appeal to more. Also, I honestly don't see much freedom in the more old games, or at least, not a larger amount of non-linear games than exist today.

As games get more complex, loading screens have to be there. As the market widens, games are 'dumbed down' to appeal to more.

They don't have to be there or more likely, they don't have to be there for such long periods of time. They are there as a convenience for lazy programmers, or more likely, as a convenience for studios that use engines that simply aren't that good. For example, U3 engine loads things really fast because it dynamically loads things. It puts you into game when all the textures you can see are loaded, but it's still loading stuff you can't see.

I have to agree most everyone is retarded, but we don't have to endorse it.

I think that some developers reason that amazing graphics qualify for gamepaly. I mean it's nice and all being able to see the individual strands of hair on a guys head but that doesn't mean that I'm going to forget about the game it's self. An expception is Red Faction: Gurilla. I mean that game looks good on an old CRT TV and the gameplay is excuisite.

I also don't like the fact the games are made a lot simpler. I understand that they're trying to apeal to a wider audiance but the amount of games doing it makes stupid.

These two reasons combined is why my current selection of games I play doesn't go beyond about 2003.

You make a often-missed point; sometimes it does indeed get tiring when the character you play has killed, literally, more people than the villain.

Just look at Morrowind or Oblivion; only about a dozen characters die due to the bad guy's actions, but the hero kills thousands of people and tens of thousands of moderately-sapient creatures. It would be an interesting game that would be rewarding despite having the player only murder a few hundred beings. Maybe it could be built around the concept of having the player fill an imaginary role, playing that rather than the swordsmanship simulator. I wonder if there is a market for this "play-role" style game.

7. Warez is faster, has a higher quality, and is more convenient.Now, this is a huge one. Usually, a torrent downloads much faster than steam, for example. I'm sure it's probably faster for you guys as well. Also, it seems there's a huge commitment for the warez crew to deliver a good working game. They release fixes not one day after someone finds a bit with their crack. That's much faster than any developer bothers fixing things. Alas, they also remove securom most of the time.

I was going to preorder Bioshock 2, which goes against most of my principles for games (and I should know better, every time I preordered something, I ended up regretting it), but then I saw this:

So now I don't want bioshock 2 anymore. I don't think I will even bother full-demoing it. Unless someone I trust with games tells me it's actually good.

Anyway, here we have it, stupid studios (or more likely the publishers) using intrusive methods to go nazi about what you can do with something that is now your property, including pathetic illegal click-wrap terms of use and so forth. Not only that, but the methods of distribution don't seem to be as reliable as a torrent or other p2p methods. Course, there are people who try to do something a bit different, like blizzard with wow updates. You download updates via a built in torrent client and they host a few seed-boxes to help. But otherwise, torrents and better methods of downloads seem to be lacking.

I think they're going all wrong about fighting warez and instead of actually fighting it, they are only giving people more reasons to make use of it.

1) The thing with the loading screen is weird. First of all "consoletards" only "recently" got loading screens. I remember my NES days (Feck, they arent over, I still use it) when consoles were the ONLY thing WITHOUT loading screens. Granted, most of the loading screens on home computers back then consisted of you staring at the command prompt and the last line you entered for 15 minutes, hoping your computer didnt die on you. edit: but even IN game, on the C64, on the amiga and the PCs after the 8088 generation (I think it was called) there were loading screens. Didnt even "Larry Leisure in the Land of the Lounge Lizards" have his own little loading screen?

I dont know how old you are, but I swear, the main argument people used when they bought a gaming console instead of a full blown computer back then was in fact the "no loading screens" thingy.

I guess there was some point in the evolution of gaming when programmers realized they could stuff so much more eye/earcandy into their games when resorting to accessing the slower data storage once in a while... be it on a console or on a PC. But almost every console prior to the gamecube/PS1 (lets not count the SegaCD or the 3DO and such, shall we) used data storage that was just as fast as the console's RAM, but these days seem to be over now.

Either way, those screens are alright, if they are a necessary evil, but just plain hateable if result of poor coding and optimization.

2) We all hate how games get dumbed down. But I guess that's just because people get dumber. At least it seems so, when I look at the "real world". You know... movies, pop music, advertisements. I barely can watch TV because the constant facepalming sort of blocks my view. Are people really that stupid? To they really buy this shit? It certainly seems so. I barely dare to point out the stupidity in iPhones and their brethren from different manufacturers, even here!

And it seems like a lost cause, call somebody dumb, and they rather feel insulted than to spend a minute thinking about their stupidity. But everybody is stupid in one way or another, the true harm comes when you cant admit this to yourself and hence block out a nice opportunity for personal growth.

So what can we do about it? I try to play indie games. I didnt buy a game for a pretty long time now. I think the last one was Sins of a Solar Empire, because it was cheap, and I still regret it.

3) FIFA, anybody? Ties directly into 2). People are sheep. People buy. I guess some of them do it, because they work 8 hours a day. If I wasted half of my waking hours in a dead end job and spent the other half recovering from it, I probably would buy a lot of shit too, just to convince myself it's worth it. Even FIFA umpteen.

4) Linear gameplay might bore you, but I can imagine a lot of games that could actually benefit from a bit more of it. Why the fuck are there even fast paced shooters that make you look through closets and whatnot for that extra healthpack? Rummaging has no place in a fast game. Might as well perform digital appendectomy on useless small subrooms or deadends / loops in such games.

Half Life 1 is a prime example for a great game with linear gameplay and limited options.

What _I_ hate is:.) roadblocks that look passable - in games that try to give you freedom. The rubble in FO3 is one of the worst offenders in my book. Soooooo bad, I cant believe it.

.) bad collision detection/hit boxes and/or the level design to go with it. It's 2010, damnit, this should have been obvious after "Ice Climber" ! I dont know why, but I played "Ratatouille". A game for kids (I suppose) in which you play a rat. You know, small furry. Pretty early in the game you come across a dog you have to outsmart someway. Cant remember what you have to do. I think on the left side, theres a small hole in some junk that is piled up. First association "I'm a rat! I'll go through there". Guess what, you cant. Pretty much ties into my prior hatething.

.) unskippable movie scenes. I love my intro, I love my atmosphere. But I want to be able to click it away, because sometimes, you know, I'M FRIGGIN SETTING EVERYTHING UP before I actually play it. Sometimes that includes killing the game and restarting it. Sometimes I like to play a game over and over again, maybe just because I enjoy a 10 minute part of it, somewhere 2 minutes into the game. Whatever the reason might be, nobody should force their friggin videos/logos on me. Common practice for EVERY FUCKING Ubisoft or EA game: find those *.bik files and delete everything that reeks of company logo/advertisement.

But all in all, even when I have a bad day, I can say I dont hate modern games too much... because I wouldnt even touch em with a ten foot pole these days

Weakest argument ever.Security is put in place as a response to transgressions. I find it infuriating yet amusing every time someone displays the outright idiocy to claim that piracy exists because of anti-piracy measures.

Weakest argument ever.Security is put in place as a response to transgressions. I find it infuriating yet amusing every time someone displays the outright idiocy to claim that piracy exists because of anti-piracy measures.

And with that- I'm out of this thread.

Piracy doesnt exist because of the anti-piracy measures. It exists because people prove they _can_ crack a copy protection. Most of the time it's not about stealing stuff or enabling people to steal, it's just a hobby, a test of wits. The desire to solve a little puzzle. Well, that's what "hacking" actually means, at least.

I know I download cracks for all the games I bought because I find it a bit... insulting if somebody tries to install securom/starforce/whatever drivers on my system. Sometimes even without friggin question or notification.

I know, 2 wrongs dont make a right, but heck, I'd love to see EA and Ubi go out of business, so yay, more power to piracy. It's a shame it's affecting all the coders that decided they cant survive if they dont sell out to da man.

edit: and I already pointed it out sometime: every serious gamer these days HAS to pirate (most of) his games, it's his friggin duty. Because your wallet is the only way to express your opinion in the corporate world. Now if you buy a game that you like you not only send the message "YES, this game was good, please, produce more like this" you also send the message "YES, I like to be farked up my digital rear end without lube, and I'm a good boy, watch me bend over", because, well, most of them come with securom or worse.

If you like a game, but dislike the copy protection (gasp, even legitimate customers dont want to put up with this crap!), stealing is the only way to go. Or do you really think they read your emails?

All of the above too. Loading screens are a huge turn off for me (Yes, you, Torchlight, and you damn Facebook games). Sometimes I want a 10 minute break from stuff, and it does not help when the 10 minutes = loading time. That's why I hang out on forums more than games these days.

Dumbing down is fine IMHO, as long as it doesn't detract from gameplay. Blizzard is a master at this. I think all of you forget how hard games can be to pick up sometimes. It's like a pyramid.. everyone starts with a really simple game like Tetris, Solitaire, or Diner Dash, then slowly play tougher and tougher games. Dwarf Fortress is at the tip of this pyramid. It has everything you could wish for, but you have to climb the bottom steps of it to even comprehend. So dumbing down is good, if only because it brings in more people to games in the long term.

Milking things is also natural with capitalism. If you can't get more milk out of it, sell expired milk in the same bottle. They have to make money. Ironically, indie games seem more guilty of this these days. Can't produce anything new, then remake.. or demake. Sell it to your friends and fellow developers. Oh, and charge the fools as high as possible.. the more you charge, the more people appreciate it and think it's high quality!

Look, there's nothing wrong with money. But if you make art for money, nobody's going to touch it. I wish they'd grow up like the movie industry and realize that. But if it's going to flop anyway, they have to sell out.

Graphics are an oddity. About 15 years back, if a game had good graphics, it was a good game. It's a sign that the developer pun effort in the game. Today, every publisher knows that the screenshots are the no. 1 marketing tool. That's why you get a disproportionate amount of effort put into graphics. And too bad these days, good graphics mean a lot of coding effort too.

There are people who play games for the graphics. I'm one of them. Srsly, is fun to blow up stuff, and one reason I bought Medieval: TW2 is to see pikemen get shot with cannons on elephants. It's plain fun. But I do oppose it when you have lots of pretties and the game sucks. Pretties + good gameplay = win.

And I'd add another thing. The ego of indie games. 3 years ago, I could look at TIGSource and agree with half of the stuff shown. Putting aside the compo and IGF, look at it now. What is that? And that and that and that and that! Look at the comments! WTF? Fighting is normal on the Internet, but there's a thick layer of ego growing on indie game communities. "I agree that A sucks because B said so and B is awesome"."You like WoW but not my game? My game is better than WoW! You're a child that doesn't understand anything!!""10 thousand players bought _____. 10 players bought my game. There are 10 thousand idiots and only 10 smart people.""I'm making an artistic statement with my game. It is about life. Life sucks. You have the choice of playing my game and realizing the suckiness of your life or not playing it and realizing that you're a loser."

Screw the indie community. There was a time when making games was about getting out games that you wanted to play, not about looking better than everyone else. I play games for fun. Not for innovation, not for art, not for whatever technical BS you put in it. For fun.

Logged

Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.

Muz has some good points about the indie game community. There's a huge amount of elitism in it where people look down their noses because everyone's "stupid" because they play or buy this or that. They're enjoying it. They're obviously getting their money's worth if they're enjoying it, because fun-utility is subjective. If you never play games past 2003, or only play freeware Indie Games, why does it even matter? Also, don't delude yourself, pirating games will not send a message to game companies that they should stop fighting it. If you stick your hand in a hole and get stung by hundreds of ants, you don't take steps to make your hand less threatening to the ants and stick it back in, you just never stick your hand back in the hole. If games get pirated to death, the company will simply stop selling games for the PC, or continue to ramp up security. It has to end somewhere, and it'll suck if companies win the arms race.